Ocean-Friendly Gardens

Volunteers and homeowners work on placing rocks in the swale, drought-tolerant native plants and mulch on a former lawn.

In today’s parlance, an “Ocean-Friendly” Garden is one that greatly reduces or eliminates the negative environmental effects of our grass lawns and gardens full of flowering plants from other areas with wetter climates.

Several major local environmental organizations and public agencies have been subsidizing homeowner efforts to create gardens that are more appropriate for our climate and require far less irrigation and pesticides, fertilizers or other chemicals. On this page are some photos from a demonstration project in Culver City sponsored by the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project in June, 2015. The front lawn was entirely removed and replaced by a swale (resembling a small rocky creek) and an attractive arrangements of drought-tolerant native plants, covered by mulch. Limited irrigation will support the plants until they are well established in about a year, after which limited or no watering will be needed. Some of the plants will become dormant during the hot dry seasons, which is how our native plants have always survived. The result is a natural-looking yard which will save a large amount of the family’s water usage.